On Climate Change
Nov 22, 2016
Rodger Dalman writes (Genesis in the 21st Century 2016 p 36) that Abraham arrived in Canaan at the end of a 300 year drought, a period of ecological disaster that brought the early bronze civilization to an end. The land God promised to Abraham was a barren waste and in no sense was a land of “milk and honey,” as Moses described 400 years later or had been 300...

It’s time for Lent and Easter.
It’s time to think about my
Good Friday presentation at the
Islamic Center of MN
on Jesus crucifixion.
Here are some of my thoughts about that
WHY THE CRUCIFIXION HAD TO BE
Sura 4 #157 from the Quran: Muhammad said to the Jews, you did not kill him (Jesus).
In John 10: 17-18 Jesus said, No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have...

Mary’s Diary
A Christmas play for the Advent Season
by Philip E. Friesen
The intimate details of Mary’s pregnancy and Jesus birth are narrated in the Gospel of Luke. It seems most likely that Luke would have interviewed Mary during his two year visit to Palestine in about AD 60 when he accompanied Paul to Jerusalem. This reading is my attempt to describe what feelings Mary...

Copyright 2015
INTERPRETING JESUS FOR POLITICS AND WAR
PRIESTS AND KINGS
In an earlier article we noted that the lens through which one views the text limits what one can see in the Biblical text. If we make the cross our lens for looking at history, the cross event informs the past, the present, and even the future so that we can see the whole, though not in detail or perfectly in focus. The experience...

There is an economic myth that fierce competition in providing more goods and services at lower cost improves people’s lives. This is a mirage. The reality is that people are assaulted with messages that more stuff for less money is the most important thing in life, and as the Nazis said, if people hear the message often enough, they will believe it. People who theoretically deny they believe this still...

A couple of years ago a highly educated and successful Muslim apologist invited me to an Iftar meal at his Masjid during Ramadan. After the prayers and eating the meal I spent almost three hours in Bible study with him as my teacher. We went through the entire Gospel of John in three hours as he pointed out all the places in John that clearly demonstrate Jesus humanity. At the end of the exercise he said...

On the day we call Palm Sunday, Jesus led an army of peasants to occupy the city of Jerusalem. Like the actors in the Gideon drama from the previous article, Jesus’ army was essentially defenseless, and its advantage was precisely in that fact. In both cases the winning side was not dressed like an army nor equipped as an army, and in no way looked like an army. Still it acted...